CSA Adventures

CSA Adventures are intended to be an enriching experience, offering employees an opportunity for adventure with other CSA colleagues in a fun and exciting location, removed from the business setting, that employees might not otherwise have the chance to experience.

CSA Adventure Trips — Each year the Executive Team at CSA releases a request for proposal to the employees asking them to describe a traveling escapade to a location they might not otherwise have the chance to experience. Each trip should be educational, adventurous, and entertaining but most importantly focused on allowing the participants to experience different cultures and expand their understanding of the vast difference between nationalities, while recognizing the similarities of the human condition and our environment.

Past trips have taken place in the Amazon (Brazilian Rain Forest), Africa (Tanzania and Kenya Game Reserves), Europe (Germany, Austria, and Hungary) Australia (Sydney and the Great Barrier Reef) and China (World Expo 2010 Shanghai).

In each case, the landscape provided for a mix of fun and adventure, sometimes planned and sometimes not, that stirs the spirit and leads to great stories back home. Some examples of unique and exciting itinerary items have included: Piranha Fishing, Nighttime Cayman (Enormous Alligator) Observation and Capture via small boat, Spider (Tarantula) Hunting and Rainforest Walks on, and along, the Amazon; Planes, Trains, Automobiles (and Boats) down the Danube River, Discovering Roman Ruins, and Touring Castles, Churches and Palaces in Central Europe; Walking with the Giraffe, Zebra and Warthogs in Tanzania, Sleeping with the Elephants in Kenya, and Boarding a Plane in Masai Mara with the Lions Hunting just hundreds of yards away; Ascending and Descending the Sydney Bridge, Swimming on the Great Barrier Reef, Horseback Riding on the Sand along the River and Receiving Massages in Daintree; River Rafting and Nightime Jungle Trek (Flashlighting for Possum) in Northeast Australia.

These are not business trips and phones/laptops are left at home. This is about fun, adventure and life-enhancing experiences.

CSA Adventure Challenges — Sometimes building great teams requires you to challenge those team members to accomplish things they never would have thought was possible. The intent of the CSA Adventure Challenge is to build confidence in our employees, ensure self development, positive communication, leadership and to promote the type of esprit de corps that can only be obtained by pushing a group of people to overcome a common challenge.

The CSA Adventure Challenge is a new initiative at CSA. The first adventure that was undertaken was a 178 mile relay race around Lake Tahoe, Nevada known as the Reno-Tahoe Odyssey Challenge. CSA fielded a 15 member team (eight men and seven women) which was appropriately named Conquering Sierran Altitudes (CSA). The team was comprised of people from both the West Coast (San Diego) and East Coast (Washington D.C., Mechanicsburg and Philadelphia) with athletic abilities that ranged from, “I’m training for a marathon” to “I haven’t run in 12 years”. Together, this team ran up and down the Sierra Nevada mountain range in the middle of the night, hitting a maximum elevation of 7500 feet above sea level, while dealing with high winds, rain and wonderful 40 degree mountain air. The day was spent traversing the arid pathways of the Nevada Desert while the temperature climbed to 85 degrees. In the end, the team completed the challenge in 26 hours and 25 minutes (8:55/mile) and placed 50th overall out of 154 teams.

Check out the March 2011 CSA Adventure Challenge → American Odyssey Run Relay.

Team CSA has already begun scouting the next adventure with possible candidates including the Bourbon Trail Run in October 2011 and the Ragnar Relay (Miami to Key West) in January 2012.

CSA Cup — Every year the East and West Coast operations centers hold a two day corporate meeting for all CSA employees. The first day is spent reviewing how the firm performed over the past year against all the metrics used to manage the firm and new goals are presented for the upcoming year. New policies and initiatives are also presented along with awards and recognitions. The second day consists of a Captain’s Choice golf outing. The winners of the East and West Coast outings are then challenged by the CSA Executive Team to another Captain’s Choice golf outing to take place somewhere in the United States over a weekend so that the participants can take in a little sightseeing of a city they normally don’t have a chance to visit.

Previous CSA Cups have taken place at the La Cantera Golf Course in San Antonio, Half Moon Bay (Ocean Course) in San Francisco and the Queenstown Harbor Course in Annapolis.